Praying For Your Kids

Nancy Guthrie believes that as parents we should be regularly praying for our children, no matter what age they are. She also believes we need to be praying for them at a deeper level.

And so, the Scriptures are what help us to pray, I think, into the deeper things that they would become the kind of people God wants them to be. This is Family Life Today. Our hosts are Dave and Anne Wilson. I'm Bob Lapine. We're going to talk today with Nancy Guthrie about what it would look like as parents if our prayers for our kids were guided by Scripture.

How that would take us deeper. Stay with us. And welcome to Family Life Today.

Thanks for joining us. I think we had a little time of confession already this week on Family Life Today. We've all confessed how bad we are at prayer, right?

How we need help in this area. I guess we confessed it to one another. I don't know if we confessed it to God.

Maybe we need to do that as well. But we're talking about not only teaching our kids how to pray, but we also want to talk this week about praying for our kids. And is that something that you just do naturally and instinctively as a mom, or is that something that you have to think about? Does it just happen spontaneously, or are you intentional with that? I think I've become disciplined in it as they come to my mind. It used to be that I would worry and fret, but now I take those thoughts captive and I take them before God and I kind of surrender them to God. But that has been a practice of discipline for me. What about for you, Dave? It's a plea of desperation, I think, as a dad.

When you have nowhere to turn and you're like, God, you know better. You are with them. I lift them up. It became a daily. I mean, when they were first born, of course. But then, boy, oh, boy, you hit the teenagers. And even now, as they're adults.

Even now, when they're home as teenagers, you can kind of say, well, I don't need to pray. I can work. I can make something happen here. When they become adults, it's kind of like, I don't have as much influence as I used to have. God, help!

Yeah, that's the desperate plea. We've got Nancy Guthrie joining us this week. Welcome back to Family Life Today. Thank you.

So glad to be with you. Nancy has written a book to help parents teach their kids about prayer called What Every Child Should Know About Prayer. But she also wrote a book. This is a one-year book praying through the Bible for your kids. And you were telling us earlier, this is a book that you went to the publisher and said, please let me write this book.

Absolutely. You know, I was in a place in my parenting, we were going through some difficult things. And I realized a number of things. First of all, just as you all have said, I realized I was doing a whole lot more worrying than praying. There was a lot of waking up at three in the morning and beginning to think through some of the issues, feeding on my fears.

You know, I'd follow the train toward the worst possible outcome. And when I wasn't just worrying and doing that, then I was strategizing. Like, you know, here's what I'm- You are my sister right here. A woman is like living this. You know, I gotta, you know, get this person involved.

I gotta get to read this book. You know, strategizing, make this plan. How am I going to get things turned around? Controlling the situations and helping God.

He needs my help, right? First of all, so I realized, okay, I've got to do more praying than worrying. But I also realized something else about myself, which is that if I operated on solely just going to prayer, pouring out what I wanted and what I thought was best.

Here's the thing. My desires for my child are shaped by many things and not all of them are good. I mean, I think most of us as parents would admit, especially in this social media age, you know, you get on social media and you see what's happening in other families' lives. You think, oh boy, I wish that was happening in my child's life, right?

Or you just watch. It's so easy to be competitive even about this thing, right? Or to fall into comparison. And to feel like we're failing. Feel like we're failing. And shameful.

Yes. And so I realized, you know, my desires for my child aren't necessarily shaped by what God's desires are for my child. And so I need the Bible to be shaping what I am praying for my child, not just my own desires.

I need those to get shaped by the Word of God. And so what I did was I went to Tyndale, you know, they've published this wonderful, lots of different one year through the Bible kinds of things. And I said, what I'd like to figure out if I can do would be to work my way through a one year Bible reading plan and find something in every day's reading that would not only provide a challenge to parents or some insight about parenting, but then would create the basis for a prayer in which I could put blanks so that they could pray that passage of Scripture for their child. And you see what that does, it makes the Scriptures priorities for our kids our priority rather than our own. And so that's what I began to do. I began working my way through this one year Bible reading plan, looking for something every day. And, you know, sometimes it's about your parenting and sometimes it's about you as the parent and then creating these prayers for people to then be able to insert their child's name so that we're praying for the things to happen in our child's life that God wants to happen in his children's lives.

Let me give you an example of this. One of the things that you pointed out this day was in Acts 2, 36 through 39. At the end, you have a prayer, which reads, Spirit speak to blank, so you'd insert your child's name through the preaching of your word, the reading of your word, and through my own speaking of your word.

Break through the familiarity, the resistance and the hardness and pierce blank's heart in such a way that blank will be willing to repent and be joyful about identifying with you. That is a heartfelt prayer that's Scripture based pleading with God. I'm probably not going to come up with that prayer just on my own. But if you're in that passage of Scripture that day and then you want to apply that, then it does. You think, yes, this is what I want to happen in my child's life. And that's a good example of one thing I discovered as I worked my way through this. So often the prayers are asking God to give my child a love for his word because the thing is there is no lasting change in a child's life.

There might be a little behavior modification, but there's no lasting change. There's no genuine lasting spiritual fruit if my child does not come to love and know God's word. And honestly, I mean, that might not be the first thing I would pray about, especially we tend to allow our prayers to be so circumstance driven. Whatever circumstance is going on in our child's life, we're just praying.

And then, of course, we figure out what the best outcome is, as if we know. And sometimes we even give God a timeline, you know, I need you to do this and I need you to do it by then so that this happens. So the scriptures are what help us to pray, I think, into the deeper things to create the more organic, life giving, long lasting transformation in our child's life. Have you found as people read this book that they apply it to more than their kids? Because as Anne was reading that prayer, I'm like, she's prayed that for me a lot of times that God would speak to me. But it does sound like, man, it'll be applicable to anybody. Well, I certainly hope so. And as you worked your way through the book, you would also discover that I'm constantly speaking to parents.

Because we as parents, I think sometimes maybe it begins right when we get pregnant. I don't know if you remember this, Anne. Do you remember when you got pregnant and somehow the word gets out to all of the diaper companies? Yes. Formula. Formula company, right. And you start getting magazines and coupons in the mail.

They're like, no. Right. And so immediately you start getting all these magazines and it's all five steps, too. Here's how you're going to get your child to eat right and sleep right. Give them good self-esteem, all of these things. And somehow I think that makes us think as parents. Nobody ever tells us this outrightly, but we get the idea. If I do this right, then my child's going to turn out, and I'm putting quote marks, right. There's a formula.

If we just follow the formula, it'll work. And it's up to you. And so if your kids are struggling, what does that do to us as parents? We become convinced I didn't do it right.

Right. And there is an overwhelming sense of failure that comes upon us as parents when our kids are struggling. And so, you know, another message throughout the book is the message of the grace of God for imperfect parents.

Because you know what? There's only ever been one perfect parent. And if you think about it, he had rebellious children.

Yeah, that's right. Adam and Eve, the nation of Israel. There's good news in this for us as parents who are so hard on ourselves, wanting to be good parents, but even wanting to be perfect parents. And so we need to see God the Father.

He has had rebellious children. And then we need to see Jesus the Son, this one who took upon himself the punishment that we deserve for all of our failures, including our failures as parents, because all of us have those. And then we need fellowship with the Holy Spirit, because the Holy Spirit is the one who is working in us.

And the Holy Spirit is the one we want to be working in our children's lives. See, you mentioned earlier, and you know, we think you can control these things. I think one of the things that drove me to write this book and to want to pray more is at a point, I think when your kids are still in your house, you can convince yourself that if you do start doing the right things, if you figure it out, that you've still got control. And it's not until your kids move out of your house. And as you mentioned, as they move into young adulthood, all of a sudden you realize, I don't have control.

I mean, we were kidding ourselves to think we did earlier when they were in our house, but it's as they become young adults, we really realize it. And I think the other thing we realized, certainly I did, was the things I need to happen in my child's life are actually things that only God can do. And so that means all of my strategizing and all my worrying isn't going to accomplish what needs to happen in my child's life. God must do it. And I don't want to presume upon him to do it. Instead, I want to pray and ask him to do it.

And he's honored by that. Nancy, I'm thinking about the prayer that Ann read from your book from Acts chapter 2. And I'm thinking, OK, if a mom is pregnant or has a newborn, this idea that God's word would do this or that they would, sermons they hear or me speaking, I'm going, they're a year old. Do you have to wait till your kids are five to start working through a book like this?

And at what age do you quit using a book like this? Well, I think different days are going to hit you at a different place with your kids. But from the day you know you're pregnant, the central prayer of our heart is, God, would you work through your word by your spirit and make this child who's going to be born spiritually dead? Our greatest need is that God would work to make that child spiritually alive. And boy, that's something to begin praying from the very beginning. And we pray it throughout their lives.

We praise God when we see fruit of that. I mean, somehow, here's something else I missed. I think somehow I thought this parenting gig was maybe like 18 years long. Right. Why didn't they tell us?

Nobody told us this, did they? And they didn't tell us, especially, I mean, I think when I think about our son, I think in some ways he's needed us more as parents in his young adult years than he even did as a kid. I mean, parenting, I'm just finding it doesn't end. And as I see even parents who have children even older than I do, as I see other parents who have kids who get married, and then maybe the marriage is a struggle, and they have grandchildren, and they're watching how their kids parent those grandchildren, I'm just realizing parenting never ends.

And our kids never come to the end of their need to be prayed for by their parents. I've gone through a one-year Bible, probably for maybe 10 years, so I'll read through the Bible every year. But I like having this because it's not long, it's just a page that you're kind of going back over some key scripture, and it would be easy to do. Have you seen couples do this, read it through together?

I have. It's such a beautiful thing to me. I got an email last week from a Christian leader your listeners would have probably heard of, and he said, you know, my wife, he said, I just wanted to write you, my wife and I were reading it, and he told me the date on which they were reading it. He said, I just need you to know this is exactly what we needed today. And my wife said, this just keeps blowing me away every day. So that made me genuinely happy.

And I can think of another couple that because of his work in the government, they don't wake up together in the same house every day. And she wrote me and told me that they read it together over the phone every day to pray for their kids. And those kind of things just make me really happy. And I think that reflects the fact that these parents realize, okay, we want to pray together, we want to pray, we want to be in God's word, and we want to pray for our kids.

And some hope. I think what they find is that this book brings some of those things together. You have a Bible reading plan included. So those who would want to read through the Bible in a year can do that.

Somebody who would say, yeah, I don't know that I'm up for that. You have a passage that may be two or three verses long. And then you've got a short devotional commentary on those passages, along with a prayer at the bottom for a child.

So that if you don't have the margin in your life to do 20 minutes, 30 minutes of Bible reading, you can read the verses and the devotional. And it might take you five or 10 minutes as a couple to go through this every day. And even if your spouse says, yeah, I'm not interested, you can do this on your own and find a way to be praying specifically biblically informed prayers for your kids. And again, whether they're five or whether they're 25, there's not a term limit, not an expiration date on when parents can quit praying for their kids. Well, I just read today's date and man, your insight.

Here's what I read. The story that many of us know, Stephen getting stoned in the Book of Acts and your prayer ended up somewhere I never expected to go in this. So great insight. It was like, well, there's Saul watching this and her prayer for your child is, God, through your Holy Spirit, would you speak and convict? My son, my daughter, get truth into them like Saul. Saul's watching this man get martyred for his faith and something happened.

The Holy Spirit moved in such a way that later Saul becomes Paul and writes, you know, life change things. I thought, wow, what an insight. That's not where I would have typically gone with that story. Yet when you think about that and praying for your children. Wow. And that could be a prayer for anybody.

It really could. I like the idea too of, I could see you and I doing it, but I could also see doing this with my friends, of calling each other and saying, hey, this is, let's pray over this for our kids today. I have three friends and we've been fasting and praying one day a week for our kids for probably 12 years. And so we text each other our prayer requests for the day and we each take a turn each week.

Like this week, it will be my friend, Michelle Stern. So we'll pray for her all day. But I like the idea of having this prayer based on the scripture that we've read that day.

It's a great idea. Did you spend a year writing this? Did you almost each day take a passage, pray through it? How did how did you do it? I mean, I probably spent nine months. I mean, honestly, it came with a lot of tears because I was like birthing a baby.

That's what I was going to say. Nine months is the appropriate time to write a book. I did this because I needed it. I mean, you might read those prayers and think they're really helpful for your kids.

And I really hope they are. But I got to tell you, you know, as I wrote, each one was for our child. And, you know, I won't go deeply into it, but I just have to say to you, I remember maybe a year after this book came out. And you remember I told you about how one thing I saw was that over and over again, that the prayer would be that God would give my child a love for his word. And can I just admit that a lot of these prayers that were all prayed, first of all, for my own child, a lot of times I didn't have the faith to believe that God would answer them. I'd like to say I did. I should know by now, but they just seem too big.

Some of them just seem too big. And I'll never forget about a year and a half after this book came out, my son came down. He works for my husband, works in our house every day. And he handed me a piece of paper on which he had printed the text of Philippians 1. And he said, hey, Mom, would you help me memorize Philippians 1?

We're memorizing it together in the Bible study that I'm in. I just had to step into the pantry and kind of gather myself. You're getting a little choked up now, even thinking about it.

Oh, my goodness. And I just thought about all those prayers like that that I had written that I honestly didn't have the faith to believe God would answer. And in that day, those things came together for me, that sense of here God has done this.

And you know what? I just got to tell you, that wasn't about the example of his mom and dad. This is something God did. And he did it in his timing through the people that he intended. It wasn't anything I manipulated. I couldn't manipulate to make that happen. God had to do that. But I do believe for some reason God works through our prayers. I can't explain that. It wouldn't be the way I would do it.

But that's the way God has chosen to do it. And so it's one of many prayers in there that I am seeing answered. And I would say just hearing that story for a listener out there right now, just going, I've given up.

Yeah. Don't give up. Don't give up. You've probably felt that. We've all felt that as parents. And it's like, keep asking, keep going to your knees, keep believing. And you don't know when or how or what. You don't have any idea, but you know the God who can do it.

And you just keep asking. A few weeks ago, I found this box that I had forgotten about. And it was a box where I would take strips of paper and I'd write my prayer request down and I'd throw them in this little, it was like this little wooden box. And I came across it and it had all these prayers.

And I realized like, oh, I forgot. My kids knew about the box and they would put prayer requests in too because they saw that I was praying and I pulled them out and I wept of how many of those prayers have been answered over the years that at the time I really didn't have the faith to believe either that that God would answer them. And yet there were so many that I saw God's faithfulness, not only to us, but to our kids. He's faithful and it's what we talked about earlier. God hears our prayers.

I remember reading an essay years ago where something C.S. Lewis had written and he was asking the question, if God is all knowing and all loving, why pray? If he's going to do what he's going to do, why pray? And Lewis's answer was, why breathe? He said, if God wants air in your lungs, why do you breathe? He said, you breathe because you were designed to breathe. You breathe because that's what humans do.

It's a part of God's design that you breathe. Why pray? It's because you were designed to pray and it's what children of God do. They pray.

And so trying to figure out how or why it all works together, that'll just cause you to sit over in the corner and maybe go crazy over time, right? But you pray because it's what you do. It's what you were made to do. And I think to have a guide like this that walks you day by day through and helps prompt you to pray and helps you think biblically about what you're going to pray. I think that just helps you be the person God's created you to be. Nancy, thanks for taking time to help us think about how we can teach our kids to pray and how we can do a better job of praying for them.

My joy to do that. We have got copies of both of these books, What Every Child Needs to Know About Prayer and Praying Through the Bible for Your Kids, both by Nancy Guthrie. You can go to our Family Life Today Resource Center to order from us online. Our website is familylifetoday.com or call to order 1-800-FL-TODAY. Again, the website is familylifetoday.com. Our number to call is 1-800-358-6329, 1-800-F as in Family, L as in Life, and then the word today. Now, of course, Sunday is Mother's Day, and I hope you have paid attention to that, getting something for your mom.

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